Dylan J. Price
Dylan James Price (April 13, 1985 - August 6, 2112) was an American statesman and political leader who served as the 47th President of the United States, and the first Asian-American to hold the office. A Progressive, he served from 2029 to 2037. He was a central figure in world events during the mid-21st century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic stagnation. His program for relief, renewal and reform, involved a major expansion of the role of the federal government in the economy, and an incentivized immigration program. A dominant leader of the Progress Party, he built the left-wing coalition that united labor unions, urban professionals, rural whites, and working class minorities. The Coalition realigned American politics after 2032, creating the Seventh Party System and defining American liberalism for the middle third of the 21st century. Governor of California (2023–29) California Progressive Democrats were impressed with Price's political views and charisma after his "Challenge of a Generation" speech, and in early 2022 he announced his campaign for Governor of California in the 2022 election. He defeated incumbent Governor Gavin Newsom in the general election, running on a theme of renewal for the state's struggling rural agrarian and urban gig-economy population, calling for new taxes on the wealthy and an aggressive campaign for new affordable housing and transportation infrastructure. In his first term, his administration restructured the California Labor and Workforce Development Agency to make use of project management software that had become commonplace among several Silicon Valley based corporations. This software was adopted across the state government over his first year as Governor and significantly reduced government waste while increasing the size of the state workforce. Shortly after the reforms to the administration, Price pushed the state legislature to fund the construction on the Pan-California Hyperloop Network. In 2024 Price broke with his own party and threw his support to Elizabeth Warren's Progressive Democratic run in the election of 2024, continuing his reputation as an opponent of the State Democratic Party establishment. After the Flood devastated California and government relief efforts floundered, Price switched parties and ran for re-election as a Progressive in 2026, handily defeating his Democratic and Republican opponents. His second term saw a greater emphasis on resolving the affordable housing crisis facing his state, and his administration supported a series of new zoning laws that discouraged new suburban developments to reduce housing prices through high-density projects like Residential malls, that would built near or serve as hubs for the state's hyperloop network. By the time he entered the 2028 Presidential election, California was one of the only states in the Union with no refugee camps. 2028 presidential election Price's success in California immediately elevated him to the top ranks of Progressive politicians under consideration for the presidency in 2028. The Progressive National Convention was united behind him, and Senator Elizabeth Warren did all in her power to bring Price the nomination. In June 2028, the national primary elections took place and Price received the second highest number of votes. In his speech launching his general election campaign, Price declared, "I offer you this solemn vow, that America shall have a Renewal... This is more than a political campaign. It is a call to arms." The election campaign was conducted under the shadow of the Labor Crisis and the Flood, and the new alliances which they created. Price and the Progress Party mobilized the expanded ranks of the poor as well as organized labor, ethnic minorities, urbanites, and rural whites, crafting the Renewal coalition. Price's support among members of the Labor and Green parties, as well as progressive Democrats, led him to an easy victory over his Democratic rival. On the night of the election, Price's running mate Sam Alan would suffer a stroke and die. In order to ease national tensions, Price chose Labor candidate Ivory Toldson to succeed Alan as Vice President. This laid the roots of the Progressive Coalition which would dominate American politics for the next decade. Presidency (2029-37) 'First term, 2029–33' When Price was inaugurated on January 20, 2029, the U.S. was at the apex of the Labor Crisis. The dollar was on its knees as companies fought to hold onto their workforce with higher wages and benefits. Productivity had stagnated since 2025, and more of the population than ever was working to take care of its elderly. The housing market ground to a halt as retirees sold off property to try and pay for retirement. By the evening of November 1, 44 of the 51 states – as well as the District of Columbia – had closed their banks. Bank of America was unable to open on the 1st of January, as credit dried up with the collapse of the housing market. Beginning with his inaugural address, Price began blaming the economic crisis on Wall Street and the nation's banks, the culture of greed, and the self-interest basis of capitalism. Historians categorized Price's program as "relief, renewal and reform." Relief was urgently needed by tens of millions of elderly people, homeowners, and still displaced climate refugees. Renewal meant returning the economy back to normal production through new government programs. Reform meant major fixes to the financial system and the immigration system. Price radically reduced barriers to entry for immigrants, flooding the population with refugees from Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, Nigeria, China, India, and Bangladesh. The new citizens provided a long overdue infusion of new blood into the workforce, and boosted productivity to keep up with demand. Additional reforms were made to social services, as private sector healthcare and retirement services couldn't keep up with the retirement of the Baby Boom generation. Medicare was extended to every citizen and Social Security was reformed to adequately provide retirement services to the nation's elderly through a new progressive payroll tax and a phased raising of the retirement age. 'Financial Services Acts' Price's "First 100 Days" concentrated on the first part of his strategy: immediate relief. From January 24 to June 16, 2029, he sent Congress a record number of bills, all of which passed easily. Like Cory Booker, he saw the Crisis caused in part by people no longer spending or investing because they were afraid. Price's inauguration on January 20, 2029, occurred in the middle of a bank panic, the very next day he declared a "trading holiday" and called for a special session of Congress to start January 24, at which Congress passed the first Financial Services Act of 2029, which among other things, created a series of public-credit unions through the US Postal Service and absolved much of the country of its credit history. These credit unions were modeled off of several pilot projects created in California, Washington, and Massachusetts that made use of machine learning AI to reduce waste and corruption. This was his first proposed step to recovery. To give Americans confidence in the financial system, Price signed the William-Duvall Act that gave the FDIC the power to underwrite non-speculator investments. Price also signed several bills to close corporate tax loopholes, raising the effective tax rate on major corporations from 2% to 20% in 2029, extending taxes on capital gains and personal income, and establishing a hyper progressive tax code. The bulk of these tax revenues were targeted at supporting new social services and funding public works. In 2031 the next major Financial Services Act ended the printing of physical currency by the US mint and transitioned the country to an all-digital encrypted currency. This reform also created a the Federal Creditworthiness Index, which replaced private credit scoring as the means of measuring credit worthiness for consumers. Federal reserve banking terminals, which had seen a great deal of success in their first two years, were expanded to all federal buildings and could be requested by State and Local governments. 'Labor reforms' Perhaps no part of Price's legacy is more important than the immigration reforms he took shortly after the first Financial Services Acts. The Labor Shortage was the defining challenge of Price's presidency. Full employment and high wages had driven inflation to record highs. With demand outstripping production in almost every sector of the economy, cost of living rates were also at record highs. Shortly after taking office, Price created the Employment Census and signed several executive orders to empty the nations' climate refugee camps and get the displaced back to work where they were deemed most needed. The Community Self Sufficiency Program (CSSP) was created to retrain unemployed manufacturers and white-collar workers for trade-skill jobs and help them relocate to where they were most needed, using similar project management AIs as had been used in California when Price was still governor. The bulk of this labor force was tasked with rebuilding the effected areas along the North East or standing up public housing. However, even with the retraining programs, there simply weren't enough workers to get productivity up to acceptable levels. The obvious solution was to encourage foreign workers to emigrate to the United States, and it became the single most hotly opposed program of the Price administration. Mass protests broke out by rural whites when the Labor Relief Act of 2029 was introduced to congress, automatically granting citizenship to any green card holders in the US, amnesty to any illegal immigrants who were not incarcerated, and significantly reduced barriers to entry for new immigrants. The bill passed with a single vote majority in the Senate, and it was met with outright hostility by a vocal minority of the country's Caucasian population. On February 3, 2030, Price signed the Refugee Resettlement Act, making it much easier for climate refugees to gain Green Cards and work in the United States. Additionally, the act also provided public housing for the first year of an immigrant's residence in the United States, along with beneficial social services to reduce the cost of living. This act resulted in millions of refugees pouring into the country by the spring, and won Price a Nobel Peace Prize for reducing the burden of the Refugee crisis on the rest of the planet. However this single act sparked a wave of violence that would last the remainder of Price's presidency as White Nationalist groups across the country committed acts of domestic terrorism against minority groups and government centers. None of these groups were large enough or densely packed enough to form a coherent opposition force, but the violence would be a defining challenge of Price's administration. 'Welfare Reform' By the time President Price had taken office, 25% of all homeless citizens were over the age of 75. Many were illegally squatting in homes that had been repossessed by banks, and some were lucky enough to be in homes that couldn't be repossessed because the bank that owned it had gone bankrupt. Social Security was all but exhausted of funds, and younger people were screaming for tax relief. Price enacted a series of major reforms to reduce the burden on retirees (though many people saw their generation as the cause of the Crash). Public housing programs for the elderly were put into effect, and millions of foreclosed homes were seized by the government to serve as retirement communities. The Social Security Amendments of 2029 created a progressive tax to cover the cost of these reforms, while also extending Medicare as a right of birth and instituted new COLA and chained CPI methods to calm resentful members of the Flood Generation. The retirement age was progressively raised and ultimately removed for people under 50 to be replaced with a requirement that a citizen must demonstrate that they are infirm to receive benefits. Price's most lasting change to public welfare was the Medicare Reform Act of 2030 and the Income Freedom Act of 2030. The MRA extended Medicare to every citizen and charged the Department of Health and Human Services to build public hospitals and pharmacy services. The IFA dissolved most of the nation's welfare programs and created a regressive basic income system dependent on income level and progressively drawing down benefits rather than simply cutting them off. Price's goal was to reform the economy to allow the major of workers who were freelancers or independent contractors to have a sustainable career choice by effectively taxing companies the revenue they would have spent on employee pensions and healthcare, and covering those services as government programs; while the RBI would give the unemployed a cushion that would not trap people into the inter-generational welfare system of the previous generations.. 'Foreign policy, 2029–2033' Despite Price's more moderate background, he and Secretary of State Eric Garcetti acted with great care not to provoke globalist sentiment. Price's landmark message to the International Monetary Fund in 2029 effectively ended any major efforts by the international community to collaborate on ending the worldwide depression, and allowed Price a free hand in economic policy. Price was a lifelong critic of free trade and nationalist. Securing American economic dominance was one of his objectives. The main foreign policy initiative of Price's first term was the New Community Policy, which was a re-evaluation of U.S. policy towards Latin America. Since the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, this area had been seen as an American sphere of influence. American forces were deployed across the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean and many former island nations were functionally U.S. protectorates. Many Latin American nations believed this to be the prelude to renewed American intervention in their countries. Price organized and shepherded the passage of the Rio de la Plata Treaty, which re-affirmed American commitment to the sovereignty and stability of Latin American and organized the first joint task forces for regional security with South American Nations that would lead to a series of war games with Latin American nations. 'Second term, 2033-37' 'Affordable Housing' The issue of housing had become a persistent problem prior to Price's election. Going back as far as the Great Recession, the number of Americans able to afford homes continually declined after the Crash of 2008. By the crash of 2027, the median household income of the United States was no longer sufficient to afford a private residence. Price initially addressed this through a series of federal loan buybacks and reduced real-estate taxes on families with only one home. These early policies, combined with the Financial Services reforms, made it easier for families to keep their existing homes and buy new ones. More substantially, the government buyback program heavily favored "Sprawl Repair" projects to create more affordable, high-density housing. Despite these early efforts toward a market-driven solution, the need for affordable housing persisted and his second term saw a much more aggressive push for public housing programs. As millions of people began pouring into the US to meet the demand for jobs, more radical approaches to affordable housing were proposed. Most home builders had gone bankrupt after the crash of '27, and wealthier immigrants took to new cottage communities and residential malls that were popular among the current generation of homeowners, but with domestic climate refugees taking most public housing projects, many states faced the possibility of massive slums if the new citizens could not afford homes in the suburbs. Price's administration campaigned hard in 2032 for reforms for urban development, funding billions for HUD to build new residential malls in rural communities and public works projects to support these new communities with infrastructure. The federal government built these structures, but transitioned administrative control to the cities and states. Later reforms would see HUD transition the bulk of construction and management powers to state and local urban planning departments. Reforms were also made to renters rights that made it easier for people to move to a new job in a new city. To address the challenge of rebuilding much of the Eastern Seaboard, most of HUD's projects were funded in concert with redevelopment programs through the Army Corps of Engineers. 'Public Infrastructure' Shortly after the beginning of his second term, Price passed the final piece of his Renewal effort, nationalizing local and state hyperloop networks and funding the construction of connecting lines that would allow anyone in America to easily travel to anywhere else on the continent in the National Transportation Act of 2033. Most of these lines were privately owned before the crash, and the few that were state-owned only ran along historic transit corridors. The new National Hyperloop Network would connect every city and town with more than 25,000 residents to each-other, enabling anyone in the country to travel to anywhere else in the continental US in 30 minutes or less. By the time the first national lines were completed, coupled with Price's housing reforms, this act served as a major redistribution of wealth from urban areas to rural communities, and made it much easier to manage the new workforce. The midwest, which during the Great Reset had become known as the "Rust Belt" and/or "the Flyover" would grown into one of the wealthier regions of the country as urban workers would relocate to buy cheap land around residential malls and create high density residential developments for citizens commuting to major cities and back. This reform would be critical to the Biotech Boom of the 2030s and 40s, as it made it easier for businesses to expand or be created on cheap land while still efficiently reaching customers and investors. 'Foreign policy, 2033–2037' Price was the first President to recognize the dangers of Japan and Turkey's expansionist policies in Eurasia. While most of the public was sympathetic to Japan's refugee policy, Price saw the risk of Japan's Extraterritorial Districts in the North Pacific, and remarked privately to his Secretary of State, "this is gonna lead to another world war if we're not careful." Price publicly supported Turkish, Polish and Japanese peacekeeping efforts in the former Eurasian Union, but maintained limited involvement by the United States in favor of supporting regional/local powers to balance each-other. Price believed that by supporting unification factions in China and bolstering Korea an effective counterweight could be created to keep Japan in check, but found little support from the public who were largely glad to be rid of nation-building adventurism in Eurasia. In 2034 Price quietly supported the Defense Department's Project ASGARD as a last option against Japanese and Turkish expansion in Eurasia. Price believed that a strong orbital defense network would be the best way to coordinate a truly global military and counter any expansive powers. Price supported heavy investments in defense programs that moved US military power back to American territory, effectively completing the transition from a military with a global presence to a force that could easily be deployed globally while being stationed at home. After His Presidency Following his Presidency, Price took over leadership of Habitat for Humanity, becoming its most high profile member and retooling the organization to focus on refugee resettlement in the 2040s. In the lead up to WWIII, Price became more outspoken about Japanese actions in the North Pacific, and was briefly considered for the position of Secretary of State by President Jacobi. During the war, he became a major proponent of the Jacobi administration's policies and campaigned for her in 2052. Price also brought Habitat in as one of the founding organizations of the Earth Working Group, and led the charge on adopting colonial construction techniques for terrestrial housing problems. Price was one of Oscar Lachman's most outspoken critics, and during the leadup to the election of 2084 the Progress party introduced an amendment to the constitution that would have removed term limits for Presidents who'd been out of office for more than 20 years, in a clear bid to draft Price. Price actually opposed this amendment, and it never successfully passed the House. Price argued that Lachman's deportations were unconstitutional and unethical, and hotly opposed his privatization campaigns for many government services. He positioned Habitat to aid the Mexican government in resettling the millions of Mexican Americans in northern Mexico, but later distanced the organization as Mexico began its occupation of Central America. Price spent his last years trying to convince Congress to lighten immigration policy for Mexicans. His death in 2112 was met with a national day of mourning and thousands turned out for his funeral. Price is regarded as one of the 21st Century's greatest Presidents and one of its most successful post-Presidents. Category:Presidents of the United States